O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 | Page 6

a curious feeling as if they were all--that is, Lady
Sherwood and Gerald; not Sir Charles so much--protecting him from
himself--keeping him from making breaks, as he phrased it. That hurt
and annoyed him, and piqued his vanity. Was he a social blunderer, and
weren't a Virginia gentleman's manners to be trusted in England

without leading-strings? He had been at the Front for several months
with the Royal Flying Corps, and when his leave came, his Flight
Commander, Captain Cheviot Sherwood, discovering that he meant to
spend it in England, where he hardly knew a soul, had said his people
down in Devonshire would be jolly glad to have him stop with them;
and Skipworth Cary, knowing that, if the circumstances had been
reversed, his people down in Virginia would indeed have been jolly
glad to entertain Captain Sherwood, had accepted unhesitatingly. The
invitation had been seconded by a letter from Lady Sherwood,--Chev's
mother,--and after a few days sight-seeing in London, he had come
down to Bishopsthorpe, very eager to know his friend's family, feeling
as he did about Chev himself. "He's the finest man that ever went up in
the air," he had written home; and to his own family's disgust, his
letters had been far more full of Chev Sherwood than they had been of
Skipworth Cary.
And now here he was, and he almost wished himself away--wished
almost that he was back again at the Front, carrying on under Chev.
There, at least, you knew what you were up against. The job might be
hard enough, but it wasn't baffling and queer, with hidden
undercurrents that you couldn't chart. It seemed to him that this baffling
feeling of constraint had rushed to meet him on the very threshold of
the drawing-room, when he made his first appearance.
As he entered, he had a sudden sensation that they had been awaiting
him in a strained expectancy, and that, as he appeared, they adjusted
unseen masks and began to play-act at something. "But English people
don't play-act very well," he commented to himself, reviewing the
scene afterward.
Lady Sherwood had come forward and greeted him in a manner which
would have been pleasant enough, if he had not, with quick
sensitiveness, felt it to be forced. But perhaps that was English
stiffness.
Then she had turned to her husband, who was standing staring into the
fireplace, although, as it was June, there was no fire there to stare at.
"Charles," she said, "here is Lieutenant Cary"; and her voice had a
certain note in it which at home Cary and his sister Nancy were in the
habit of designating "mother-making-dad-mind-his-manners."
At her words the old man--and Cary was startled to see how old and

broken he was--turned round and held out his hand, "How d'you do?"
he said jerkily, "how d'you do?" and then turned abruptly back again to
the fireplace.
"Hello! What's up! The old boy doesn't like me!" was Cary's quick,
startled comment to himself.
He was so surprised by the look the other bent upon him that he
involuntarily glanced across to a long mirror to see if there was
anything wrong with his uniform. But no, that appeared to be all right.
It was himself, then--or his country; perhaps the old sport didn't fall for
Americans.
"And here is Gerald," Lady Sherwood went on in her low remote voice,
which somehow made the Virginian feel very far away.
It was with genuine pleasure, though with some surprise, that he turned
to greet Gerald Sherwood, Chev's younger brother, who had been,
tradition in the corps said, as gallant and daring a flyer as Chev himself,
until he got his in the face five months ago.
"I'm mighty glad to meet you," he said eagerly, in his pleasant, muffled
Southern voice, grasping the hand the other stretched out, and looking
with deep respect at the scarred face and sightless eyes.
Gerald laughed a little, but it was a pleasant laugh, and his hand-clasp
was friendly.
"That's real American, isn't it?" he said. "I ought to have remembered
and said it first. Sorry."
Skipworth laughed too. "Well," he conceded, "we generally are glad to
meet people in my country, and we don't care who says it first. But," he
added. "I didn't think I'd have the luck to find you here."
He remembered that Chev had regretted that he probably wouldn't see
Gerald, as the latter was at St. Dunstan's, where they were re-educating
the blinded soldiers.
The other hesitated a moment, and then said rather awkwardly, "Oh,
I'm just home for a little while; I only got here this morning, in fact."
Skipworth note the hesitation. Did the old people get panicky at the
thought of entertaining a wild man from Virginia, and send an SOS for
Gerald, he